{"id":19400,"date":"2020-10-13T09:18:23","date_gmt":"2020-10-13T13:18:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=19400"},"modified":"2020-10-13T09:24:25","modified_gmt":"2020-10-13T13:24:25","slug":"what-do-we-do-with-evil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=19400","title":{"rendered":"What Do We Do with Evil?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/iUh_kA5oBJc\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>An Agreed-upon Delusion<\/strong><br>Tuesday, \u202fOctober 13, 2020<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The world (or \u201csystem\u201d as we use the word now) is a hiding place for unconsciousness or \u201cdeadness\u201d in the words of Paul. Both Thomas Aquinas and C. S. Lewis taught that the triumph of evil depends entirely on disguise. [1] [2] Our egos must see it as some form of goodness and virtue so that we can buy into it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If evil depends on a \u201cgood\u201d disguise, cultural virtue and religion are the very best covers of all. The leaders of both religion and empire colluded in the killing of Jesus (Matthew 27:1\u20132). In Luke\u2019s Gospel, Herod and Pilate just passed him back and forth and affirmed whatever the other one said (Luke 23:12). Christians were forewarned that the highest levels of power can and probably will be co-opted by evil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Is there a culture in this world that does not operate out of this recipe for delusion? This is what Paul means when he names \u201cthe world,\u201d or what I call \u201cthe system,\u201d as one of the sources of evil. What Paul already recognized, at least intuitively, is that&nbsp;<em>it is almost impossible for any social grouping to be corporately or consistently selfless<\/em>. It has to maintain and promote itself first at virtually any cost\u2014sacrificing even its own stated ethics and morality. If we cannot see this, it might reveal the depth of the disguise of institutionalized evil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Consider the religious rationale for the \u201cDoctrine of Discovery,\u201d which justified the conquest of the Americas and the African slave-trade. Mark Charles and Soong-Chan Rah write:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\"><p>The doctrine [of Discovery] emerged from a series of fifteenth-century papal bulls, which are official decrees by the pope that carry the full weight of his ecclesial office. . . . On May 4, 1493, the year after Columbus sailed the ocean blue, Pope Alexander VI issued the papal bull&nbsp;<em>Inter Caetera<\/em>&nbsp;. . . and offered a spiritual validation for European conquest, \u201cthat in our times especially the Catholic faith and the Christian religion be exalted and be everywhere increased and spread. . . .\u201d It gave theological permission for the European body and mind to view themselves as superior to the non-European bodies and minds. The doctrine created . . . an identity for African bodies as inferior and only worthy of subjugation; it also relegated the identity of the original inhabitants of the land \u201cdiscovered\u201d to become outsiders, now unwelcome in their own land. [3]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Evil finds its almost perfect camouflage in the silent agreements of the group when it appears personally advantageous. Such unconscious \u201cdeadness,\u201d will continue to show itself in every age, I believe. This is why I can\u2019t throw the word \u201csin\u201d out entirely. If we do not see the true shape of evil or recognize how we are fully complicit in it, it will fully control us, while not looking the least like sin. Would \u201cagreed-upon delusion\u201d be a better description? We cannot recognize it or overcome it as isolated individuals, mostly because it is held together by the group consensus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"500\" height=\"269\" src=\"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/Screen-Shot-2020-10-13-at-9.12.03-AM-500x269.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-19401\" srcset=\"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/Screen-Shot-2020-10-13-at-9.12.03-AM-500x269.png 500w, https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/Screen-Shot-2020-10-13-at-9.12.03-AM-300x161.png 300w, https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/Screen-Shot-2020-10-13-at-9.12.03-AM-768x413.png 768w, https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/Screen-Shot-2020-10-13-at-9.12.03-AM.png 2010w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Story from Our Community:<\/strong><br><em>As Covid continued to shut everything down this Spring, I became increasingly closed off from my &#8220;normal&#8221; spiritual practices. . . These daily meditations have been a life-line for me during this period where a conflagration of world and national events have left many of us struggling. My morning practice [now] involves lighting incense, reading Richard Rohr\u2019s words of wisdom, praying with him and then heading to my Zabutan [cushion] for a brief meditation-session.<\/em>&nbsp;\u2014Maia B.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><br><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An Agreed-upon DelusionTuesday, \u202fOctober 13, 2020 The world (or \u201csystem\u201d as we use the word now) is a hiding place for unconsciousness or \u201cdeadness\u201d in the words of Paul. Both Thomas Aquinas and C. S. Lewis taught that the triumph of evil depends entirely on disguise. [1] [2] Our egos must see it as some [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19400"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19400"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19400\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19404,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19400\/revisions\/19404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}